


Hot Chicken Soup

by TheRealSEHinton



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, But Dallas can't express his romantic emotions rn because boy is going through a low, Every Jally fic I write always involves romance so, In fics i write where they're not open about their relationship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Their motives in this fic are romantic, that just means they haven't confessed yet, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:29:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23403016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRealSEHinton/pseuds/TheRealSEHinton
Summary: That’s how everyone sees him. Crazy Dallas Winston. He's so insane. He’s always laughing. He’s always crazy.But he can’t control any of that.♤♤♤Johnny finally figures out where Dallas always disappears.
Relationships: Johnny Cade/Dallas Winston
Comments: 12
Kudos: 71





	Hot Chicken Soup

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to pump this out while I'm working on a new multi-chapter fic. Recently, I've been writing Jally headcanons on my Tumblr, go check it out, and I came to this odd conclusion that Dallas has rapid cycle bipolar disorder. And I did a lot of research on the disorder for future reference in case I added it to my fics, because I don't want to disrespect anyone who goes through this. Usually, when i write i take aspects of my life and try to translate them to my characters, but like... I know nothing about bipolar disorder. There's only so much Euphoria and Shamless can teach me. So please forgive me if I write anything weird or unfamiliar, and DON'T HESITATE TO POINT IT OUT!

He hears the knock on the window and decides to pretend it never happened. 

He’s curious, to a degree, about who it may be. But that curiosity doesn’t reach his bones, they’re trapped on the bed-almost as if his limbs are all shackled. He’s not interested enough, not right now. 

But there it goes again. Knock, knock, knock. And it’s so taunting it makes him want to curl further into his blanket. The warmth it provides makes everything a little bit okay, he uses it as comfort. 

A woosh, a slam, a thump-the window opens and someone tumbles inside his room. He manages to turn his head to the sound. He sees Johnny Cade awkwardly rise from the floor and dust himself off.

For a minute, he wonders if he’s hallucinating, he’s crazy enough to do it. His heart sinks to deeper depths as the figure draws closer and becomes too real to imagine. And he mumbles a faint “Jesus Christ” before he tosses his blanket over his head, trying his best to hide.

“Dal?”

His mind screams no, screeching it over and over again. He won’t allow himself to look up, it’s hard enough to move when he’s on his own.

“Dal?”

He can feel Johnny’s shadow over him, its coolness seeps through the thin fabric.

“I know you’re in there.”

He doesn’t say anything. He hopes, he’s praying, that somehow he can become invisible. And he knows he looks like shit, he can smell his breath as it hits him again and again. But his legs hardly allow him to go to the bathroom, he can hold it for hours and hours. It hurts too much to sit or stand or walk. All that’s left is to lay down and just pretend. Pretend like he always has.

He doesn’t want anyone to see him like this.

“Dal? Please look at me.”

He can’t breathe.

“Please?”

It hurts, but somehow he manages to do it. The blanket folds down and he’s eye to eye with Johnny. Brown is looking into his soul like a mind-reader. And it all feels bad, but a little okay. Johnny is close, so close. A part of him is alright with that, but too much is ashamed. 

“So this is where you disappear, huh?”

Johnny sits at the foot of the bed, even closer to him. The familiar body is warm like a faint furnace and he doesn’t mind it too much. He’s scared, but he knows that he needs this.

“Are you okay?”

He can’t say anything, he can’t even nod or shake his head. He tries his best not to meet Johnny’s eyes. They’re too knowing.

“Dal, are you okay?”

He just mumbles.

“Can you sit up for me?”

Moving hurts. It’s a physical ache and he can barely flip over to the opposite side of the bed sometimes. But the expectancy in Johnny’s eyes is fucking overwhelming.

“Please?”

Through the pain, he sits up. Maybe the lightness of Johnny’s voice helps lift him, like little wings. He sits up and averts those eyes, they’re so big and brown and it hurts. It all hurts so bad.

A hand is on his forehead. Johnny’s face is close. “Hmm. Is there a thermometer here?”

He brushes the touch away. “I’m not sick.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m not sick.” His words are final and convincing.

There’s no word for it, but he knows it’s not a fucking fever. It’s the endless cycle he’s had since he was a child. It was benign then. For days he would feel on top of the world. His life around him would be falling apart but none of it mattered. And then, out of the blue, it all halted. Everything was just… empty, useless, maybe. Sometimes he’d cry. But it was never as bad, and never to the extent that it is now.

He was twelve when everything turned black. And suddenly he was too weak to live. He sheltered himself in his room, away from society, and slept and stayed for days and days and maybe weeks and weeks. His mother was just the same. He remembers the highs and the drugs and the laughing and the singing, eerily reminiscent of what he does when he goes crazy, and then she’d shut her door for a little less than a month, and wouldn’t leave for anything.

It’s all worse than that. His mother would have her moments when the seasons changed, two or maybe three times a year. They would last long but then they’d be over. Nothing like his. It was fucking endless. Four times, five times, six times, over and over. Cycling in summer, winter, spring, and fall. On top of the world for days and then jumping headfirst into a pool of nothingness. So quick and so painful.

“What’s wrong, Dal?” Johnny asks. 

He doesn’t really know, it sucks. He wishes he could control it. So he just shakes his head.

“You look so pale, and sickly.” There’s a laugh in Johnny’s throat, so small it must be a reassurance. Something’s okay. “How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

He shrugs, not trying to think too hard to remember. “Yesterday. In the morning.”

“It’s five in the afternoon, Dal.”

“...” 

“Alright. I’ll go make you some hot soup.”

A weight is lifted from the bed as Johnny walks away. Dallas swallows hard, there’s a weird knot in his throat.

“I’m not sick,” he says again.

“I know,” Johnny calls as he leaves the room. “But you’re going to eat.”

He’s not hungry, but Johnny almost feels overpowering. At least, he’s not too overwhelming. There’s still a feeling of safety, despite him breaking every boundary that Dallas had placed. Hesitantly, he eats spoonfuls of chicken and broth, to the point where his stomach can no longer take it.

It’s only a few bites, but Johnny seems sufficiently satisfied. He takes the still-full bowl away and places it on a nearby nightstand. He looks at Dallas with round eyes. “You smell like hell.”

He can’t fight a blush, so he just turns away in shame.

“You haven’t showered in the past few days, have you?”

There’s no point in answering. It’s painfully obvious in his stench and his tousled, untamed hair. There’s no attraction in any mess that makes him up, which is unlike his usual self. The way people see him, the dirtier he is, the better. Which makes everything about his crashes even more shameful.

“We should get you into a bath.”

His mind is blank in response, there’s no argument in the cracks of his brain. He complies as best as he can while Johnny lifts him up, supports his weight with a small shoulder, and brings him to the bathroom. The world around him doesn’t seem like reality. The sounds of the water turning on and Johnny saying things absentmindedly feel like dreamy echoes. 

When he sits down in the tub, a part of him feels the heat, a part of him doesn’t. As if there’s an inner layer of his body that doesn’t register feeling, or any of his senses. A layer to him that’s perpetually numb. It makes him feel like cracking.

He barely notices Johnny’s eyes on him, or the expectancy inside of them. He doesn’t notice the realization that washes over him as he softly mumbles, “I guess I’ve gotta do this myself.”

Soft hands covered in foam move across his body. They, themselves, are not terrifying. They’re kind and they mean well. But he’s so afraid of everything, of the darkness and the numbness and the shame. The shame that bubbles up in him as Johnny Cade scratches his naked skin with a sponge. The shame that builds in his throat and his eyes and he can’t take it anymore.

“Johnny?”

“Yeah, Dal?”

“Can you look away for a second?”

Johnny says nothing at first. Then he nods solemnly and turns his head.

Momentarily, though there’s still the heat of another body, he feels alone. The tears fall silently and roll down, salty drops that mix with the soapy water. But his lip starts to tremble and then his shoulders start to shake. All of a sudden it becomes too much to handle, and the quiet breaks as he sobs. 

He hates how loud he is, he knows Johnny can hear him. And yet, he can’t stop himself. It’s all so unbearable and everything just starts crawling in on him, like tangible darkness-cold, reaching out. He feels it so heavily in his chest, in his stomach, and he just cries.

He hears the shift, and the water splashing. Small arms are suddenly wrapped around his shaking body and holding him close. Johnny’s hair skims his back and his breath is cool against the heat of warmed fleshed.

“It’s okay,” Johnny says softly. “It’s okay, I’m here. It’s all okay.”

He’s back on the bed, laying down, back on the soft mattress. New shirt, new boxers, new clothes, and his blanket’s in the washer. Through the thin walls of his house, he can hear the machine go thump, thump, thump.

Johnny’s next to him again, a quiet hand draped over his trembling body.

Dallas can’t look at him. His eyes are intent on his fumbling hands. The nails are bitten to the point of nonexistence, destroyed. He chews them when he has his high moments, in the midst of the snorting and the smoking and the screaming and the fighting his fingers manage to find a sure way to his teeth. When he crashes it’s like he wakes up from a weird dream, and right before he lands into another one he sees the aftermath of what felt like insanity.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Dal-”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to see. I didn’t want you to be here.”

“I know that.”

“Why’d you have to come?” He breathes out.

Johnny sighs. “Cuz I was worried about you. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Dallas flips away from Johnny, burying his head in his hands. Johnny sits up and leans over him. “I didn’t know you were like this.”

“If you knew you wouldn’t’ve come.”

“I would’ve,” Johnny says. “And I will, again and again, now that I know where you run off to.”

His eyes are hot. “I don’t want you to come.”

“Cuz you’re scared.”

“...”

“You’re embarrassed and ashamed.”

His body’s cold, his mind’s numb, but his face is burning. And it all just hurts.

“Why? I don’t want you to be ashamed. This doesn’t make you any less of what you are.”

Dallas turns his head a bit. “You know what this is?”

Johnny smiles softly and leans back. “Kind of. All I know is what I am. And sometimes I just… I don’t know, I guess I get it. When I’m hiding in a hole, crying for three days straight, I don’t want anyone to see me either.”

He nods, opening up slightly. Allowing himself to be seen. It’s a small, involuntary gesture, but Johnny notices it.

“But Dal… you need people, sometimes. You know that? People care about you, they wanna make sure you’re okay. I wanna make sure you’re okay. And I want to be here, I don’t want you to fight that.”

“John-”

“You’re always fighting,” he says firmly. “I want you to let go. I want you to feel safe enough to be yourself, I want to give that to you. I want you to know this is okay. I want you to stop fighting, Dal.”

He doesn’t know how, it’s so hard. It’s physically painful to look someone in the eye and have them know that he is the way he is. He doesn’t want anyone, especially Johnny, to see this. The struggle, the hurt, the constant battle he has with his own emotions. Emotions he can never seem to control.

And he wants to let go, to get rid of the edge and just feel, if not happy, relieved, but it hurts.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

“Dally.”

To cry. To breathe. To move. To share. It all hurts. He can’t do it.

But something makes him want to try, even though trying kills him the most.

He’s tried all his life. To love, to forgive, to pretend, to forget. And all he does is screw up and fail and fail and fail.

That’s how everyone sees him.

A screw-up, a failure.

Crazy Dallas Winston. He’s so insane. He jumps on bars and screams to rock songs. He has sex so much he might as well go blind. He snorts so much coke his brain should be fried. He smokes all the time. He’s always fighting with everybody. He’s always laughing. He’s always crazy.

He can’t fucking control any of that.

But he looks into Johnny’s eyes and he doesn’t see that. He doesn’t see Crazy Dallas Winston. He doesn’t see his insanity as he’s high, he doesn’t see his depression as he’s low, he sees a murky reflection that reveals nothing other than possibility and makes him want to try.

So he cries and holds on to an anchor. Johnny reaches out and lets him release it all. No shame. No worry. No hurt.

Johnny just whispers softly into his wet hair, so gentle, so peaceful, as he runs gentle fingers over him, “Stop fighting, stop fighting, stop fighting.”


End file.
